Farm lands not to be used as petrochemical regions

NEW DELHI: Government will not allow farm land to be acquired for setting up of petroleum and petrochemical regions, Chemicals and Fertiliser Minister Ram Vilas Paswan told Rajya Sabha on Friday.

"Each Petroleum, Chemical and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) will have an area of about 250 sq kms, none of which will be agriculture or farm land," he said replying to supplementaries during the Question Hour.

The specially delineated investment regions are being proposed to encourage global scale investment in petroleum, chemical and petrochemical sectors to accelerate economic growth, he said.

The onus of land acquisition would be with the investing company and state government would only monitor the process. Of the proposed area, only 40 per cent would be earmarked for processing activities.

"The PCPIR policy is not location specific. Applications received from interested state government for setting up PCPIRs are to be considered in terms of the policy on PCPIR," he said.

An application for setting up a PCPIR at Vishakhapatnam- Rajahmundry-Kakinada has been received from Andhra Pradesh, he said. "Preliminary scrutiny of same was undertaken in consultation with state government officials and on the basis of same they are in the process of re-submitting a proposal," he added.

The Centre would provide external physical infrastructure like rail, road, ports, airports and telecom for such projects, while the state government would be responsible for providing power, water and sewerage, he said.